HARTFORD, Conn. – Continuing his efforts to sway female voters, Mitt Romney on Wednesday campaigned at a female-owned printing company, surrounded by women workers and business owners who he said were being hurt by the Obama administration’s economic policies.
The stop was part of a coordinated effort by Romney’s campaign to flip the Democratic argument that Republicans are waging a “war on women” on its head. Earlier this week in Pennsylvania, he accused President Obama of waging “the real war on women” by his failure to jump-start the economy.
While Romney met with six local businesswomen and then spoke to an audience primarily made up of women, his communications team sent out e-mail blasts from prominent Republican women (Reps. Mary Bono Mack of California and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, then Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire ), all assailing Obama’s economic record.
Meanwhile, Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul got into a heated Twitter battle with her Obama campaign counterpart Lis Smith over a statistic being used by Romney that 92 percent of the jobs lost since Obama has been president have been women’s jobs.
The figure has been called into question by fact-checking websites: It was called “mostly false” by PolitiFact and The Washington Post’s Fact Checker found there to be “less to this stat than meets the eye."
Smith wrote: “Repeating a repeatedly debunked claim won't close 19% gender gap or help w/Romney's credibility problem”—referring to recent polls that show Romney trailing Obama among women by 19 points. Saul quickly responded with a tweet directed back at Smith: “If you dispute that women account for 92% of jobs lost, then what is the figure we should be using?”
At a subsequent campaign stop in Warwick, R.I., Romney sought to turn another perceived Obama strength against the president -- by contending that the so-called "Buffett rule" requiring the extremely wealthy to pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes is divisive. His remarks received a standing ovation.
"Right now, the new source of division is to say let’s find the very most successful in our country and say they’re bad guys, go after them, and let's divide America," he said. "Look, this nation is one nation under God -- dividing America is not the right way to go."
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